Heather Boaz: Better Homes
Rosenberg Gallery
Terminal X-ess, 2014 oil on canvas 24” x 24”
Arch Window 2015 archival inkjet print 28” x 40”
Canopy Bed 2015 archival inkjet print 60” x 40”
Heather Boaz’s new body of work, Better Homes, is at once disorienting and familiar. Upon first glance, the images appear to be collages, but closer inspection reveals they are actually photographs. Images are culled from Better Homes & Gardens magazines and home improvement books then strategically placed in artificial and everyday settings. Inspired by backdrops used in movie and television sets, Boaz is intrigued by the conflation of scale—how faraway landscapes are actually printed images, fictitious flat environments brought to life.
Candelabra 2015 archival inkjet print 60� x 40�
In this series, Boaz plays off of this notion of scale by taking photographs of embedded small photographs. However, the real magic happens with her choice to print them in a large format. By blowing each image up larger than life, the original ends up looking miniature, almost like dollhouse furniture nestled in a variety of otherworldly settings. A bed is cradled by a cobweb; a chandelier hangs from a branch. There is something about the miniature that awakens the child within, the child who still believes in magic.
Blue Chair 2015 archival inkjet print 40” x 28”
When we are children, we fantasize that the magical worlds we envision will become real, and as adults, we fantasize about the objects we can buy to furnish our homes. We scour magazines and the Internet in search of the perfect setting, the ideal; these sources offer photographs of desired reality. The childhood desire for fantasy to be real is displaced by our desire for things. The fantasy is now in the magazine; we desire those imagined perfections to be our home, our life. We long for objects that we falsely believe will make our life better, in the same way we longed for fantastical realities as children. Suspended for a brief moment in the liminal space between fantasy and reality, Boaz’s work offers the viewer a place of respite, a fleeting escape from the harsh realities of life.
Heather Boaz: Better Homes January 20 – March 29, 2015 ARTIST’S RECEPTION:
Thursday, February 5, 6-9 p.m.
Rosenberg Gallery DIRECTIONS
Baltimore Beltway, I-695, to exit 27A. Make first left onto campus.
GALLERY HOURS
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday – Friday 410.337.6477
The exhibit is free and open to the public.
The Rosenberg Gallery program is funded with the assistance of grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the state of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Baltimore County Commission on the Arts and Sciences.
goucher.edu/rosenberg
COVER IMAGE: Blue Room, 2015, archival inkjet print, 60” x 40”
15266-3448 01/15